Comment by kevinalexbrown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinalexbrown | Hacker News Reader

While I thoroughly enjoy the heartwarming part, I don't think that's why it's good advice from a business perspective.

It's great advice because word of mouth is extremely important for a technical business selling to a small but lucrative market where buyers have alternatives (like hiring decisions). This will have less impact in large consumer sales where advertising matters, or when you have a market cornered.

It will work when you apply for a job or hire someone. You're selling to a small market - the few employers you speak with. They have some alternatives, but if someone they know and trust (Bob, in this story) raves about you from first-hand experience, it matters quite a lot. Likewise if someone tells me how awesome it is to work with a particular person or group, I am much more likely to take that job among competitive alternatives. Treat your employees like crap and all you'll get are crap new employees, etc.

We don't all run businesses in small lucrative markets. But we do all apply to jobs from time to time, where previously helped or pissed off people will make a huge difference.

This is dead on. It's a mistake to read this and take away some homey homily about how "every customer is a snowflake!" -- the point is that you should correctly value the passionate customer. Your marketing and outreach and customer service departments should understand the relative values of "bought it, loved it!" and "bought it, so?" Those relative values will vary from product to product/industry to industry

The comment below at this time ('survivorship bias') is also correct, but only if it's interpreted as a touching anecdote rather than as crucial customer-behavior information for his market segment. Understanding the dynamics of how your customers make their purchasing decisions seems like a better lesson to take from this.

(Not the same for every product, either! E.g., my being passionate about Cheerios does nothing for General Mills, really...)

ya know, I just don't agree with anyone who posts here and uses the word "customer." Yea, Bob was a customer but he is also a human being. Less we forget this and remember we are working with other people then you don't need to worry about "snowflakes" or whether you're customers are happy or not. Just treat everyone you come in contact with with respect & regardless of how you met (business or otherwise) and this world would just be a much better place.

Exactly.

You're completely right. Too funny -- i had written a comment about how there was probably some bullshit MBA phrase for the process of "correctly valuing passionate customers", but deleted it as overly cynical and offensive to the up and coming masters-of-the-universe on HN. Can't win! :)

I think it's still worthwhile to think about systems of people in terms of their aggregate actions as well as in terms of each being an individual.

Thank you for using the word human.

I'm all about the "Don't kiss others' booties on the off chance that it will come back to you" because if you're doing it for that reason, you're doing it wrong.

Just treat people well, take everything one step at a time, and look at it from their vantage point. These things in mind and everyone will walk away from the table happy the majority of the time.

If your customer service reps are trained, mature and willing then there's no difference between the experience with them and you.

> Just treat people well, take everything one step at a time

You can only take so many steps each day. Forfeit too many steps for some guy who won't pay off and you lose out.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to pretend that you aren't affected by the mannerisms and maturity of all living human beings. To believe that there's a good rationalization to finding a short cutoff of helping people.

This article's true evil is this: He puts helping the guy with a technical problem as a favor, not as a simple kind duty.

We don't want to spend everyday as tech support, that's reasonable. But if people were better educated instead of taken care of, perhaps they wouldn't need as much.

The "duty as favor" part of your comment was very insightful. This is a recurring theme in all actions that ultimately cost the person performing them without foreseeable payback. This is, in my experience, displayed by people with shaky moral fundament and questionable values. There's always speak of how e.g. "white lists", the inclusion in which is awarded to persons or companies that act correctly, is detrimental - because they should not be handling incorrectly in the first place, and being normal should not be incentivized.

However, when you're running a business, especially during its infancy, your values need to be questionable and questioned in order for your approach to adapt to the environment. Following questionable values in this case is not only admissible but even required, and you'll need to reinvent yourself quite often. There is no "normal" when you're trying to break the mould.

Definite upvote from me for bringing this up.

The thing is though, he went well beyond 'respect', and really went out of his way to help the guy. That's very nice, but doing that for everyone, all the time simply may not be feasible.

It's a question of economics: you simply can't bend over backwards for all customers, in all lines of business, without going bust. Silly example: if I walk into a hardware store and buy a nail, and then proceed to waste an hour of the salesperson's time, that's a loss to them. Perhaps they'll make it back if I come back again and again and buy other things, but it's something that each business has to determine.

Funny, when I was a student and worked at a hardware store that was almost the exact example they gave as encouragement. You want the customer to trust you and the store and so most of the time their projects start with a box of nails. Do they need the tinpenny, concrete, roofing, anchor nails, or tacks? Most people who know what nails they need don't bother you. But the guy/girl starting on their first renovation or garden are practically begging you to take their money. Personally, when I step foot into a hardware store it's a given that I'm leaving with $100 worth of stuff.

Now a better example would be consumer electronics. It's expensive, most people don't know what they really want they read some review in engadget, and the margins on the name brand stuff is extremely low ($5-10, on Sony TVs for example).

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